DLT eBook Club - How The Bible Can Help Us Understand

Illness, Disability and Caring
By Bernadette Meaden

DAY FIVE

Hello, and welcome to the latest instalment of the DLT eBook Club, a virtual book study group from Darton, Longman and Todd designed to help us connect, interact, read and reflect together during this time of social distancing and self-isolation.

This week’s featured book is Illness, Caring and Disability by Bernadette Meaden, the latest release in our How the Bible Can Help Us Understand series. Bernadette has selected a short extract from her book for each day of this week, from Monday to Friday, and added some questions at the end to prompt further reflection and discussion.

Please feel free to post your thoughts in response to each day’s extract in the comments below, or where we have posted the link on Facebook (@dltbooks) and Twitter (@dlt_books).

It is not essential to have read the full book in order to take part in the DLT eBook Club, but we hope it might make you want to do so. Look out also for our new eBook site, www.dltebooks.com, from where you can buy this week’s featured book and many others, all at half price until further notice.

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How the Bible Can Help Us Understand: Illness, Caring and Disability by Bernadette Meaden will be released in print in the summer, but you can download the eBook now from DLT, or from Amazon for Kindle.

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Day Five

He spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being righteous, and despised everyone else, ‘Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like everyone else, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I possess.” The tax collector stood at a distance, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” This man, I tell you, went home again justified; the other did not. For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, but anyone who humbles himself will be raised up.’ 

Luke 18:9-14

There is a growing tendency to view some illnesses as being, to a greater or lesser extent, due to poor lifestyle choices which represent a form of moral failing. For example, obesity and the diseases which accompany it are often portrayed as the result of stupidity, laziness, or gluttony. People with an addiction problem are condemned as lacking self-discipline, and those whose addiction involves illegal substances are criminalised and stigmatised.
 

People who pride themselves on living a healthy lifestyle may feel morally superior to those who don’t. But throughout the gospels we see that Jesus is not impressed by people who consider themselves superior in this way.

Whenever ill health is spoken of as being the result of poor personal choices, justice and humility oblige us to consider what are known as the social determinants of health. These are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age - the wider forces which shape their lives. Social determinants make it relatively easy for some people to have a long and healthy life, while making it almost impossible for others. When we take these factors into consideration, it becomes clear that a judgemental attitude towards ill health is not only lacking in compassion, it is often quite unfounded and unjust.

There is a clear and well documented link between poverty, disadvantage, and ill health, manifested most starkly in the difference in life expectancy between the rich and the poor. The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics tell us that in England, the difference in life expectancy between the least and most deprived people was 9 years for males and 7 years for females. These however are average figures for the whole country. When we take a closer look at the most and least deprived areas in individual regions or cities, the differences are more dramatic. In London for instance, the difference in life expectancy between rich and poor areas can be 25 years.

Perhaps what is even more relevant to our considerations are the figures on Healthy Life Expectancy, or Disability Free Life Expectancy. As the Office for National Statistics baldly states: ‘Healthy life expectancy at birth among males living in the most deprived areas in England was 51.7 years, compared with 70.4 years among the least deprived, almost two fewer decades of life in “Good” general health.’

So, we see, when it comes to health and lifestyle, the gospel advice not to stand in judgement over others is very pertinent.

One of the most important factors which contributes to health inequality is the ability to access a healthy diet. Public Health England has published The Eatwell Guide, official government guidance on a diet that meets all our nutritional needs. For a household to be able to eat this way, they must be able to afford the foods recommended, and have the resources and facilities to cook them.

In September 2018, the Food Foundation researched the affordability of this diet, and concluded that for households in the bottom ten per cent of the income scale, almost three-quarters of their disposable income would need to be spent on food in order to eat in the recommended way. In low income households with children, the amount they would need to spend to eat this healthy diet would leave very little money left to pay for electricity, gas, shoes, clothes, transport, toiletries, etc. In contrast, those at the top of the income scale would need to spend only 6 per cent of their income to eat healthily.

And of course, to buy that good nutritional food, one has to get to a shop that sells it. Some deprived areas have been dubbed ‘food deserts’, as fresh food is not available without access to a car or bus – and bus fares reduce the amount of money available to spend on food when you get to the shop, thus compounding the problem. So we can see that if we judge people for having an unhealthy diet, we may be looking at only part of the picture, and humility may require us to look a little deeper.

We now know that in the UK, people in deprived areas have been dying of COVID-19 at more than twice the rate of people in prosperous areas. The UK’s inequality in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy seems to me to be a grave injustice that should be at the very the top of our political agenda - but it is rarely mentioned. What do you think are the reasons for this? Would taking it seriously require changes that are considered too radical?

ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES

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